What a day on the water! Clear, limited wind, beautiful and sunny…who needed fish to make for an incredible day? We launched under the bridge on Mercer Island at about 8:30 this morning and headed north around Faben Point to the west side of the island. Not seeing any bait on the meter made a left turn and headed south under I-90 and ran to an area just south Seward Park but on the west side of Mercer Island. At that point we started metering both bait and an occasional target fish. Over the side went 2 cut-plug brined herring, one on the downrigger at 25’ and one on lead line running at 3 colors. I noticed that the target fish were marking at 41’ just above the bait schools so I dropped the downrigger to 36’. Had a major takedown almost immediately but it came unglued. Worked the area for another hour with nothing so we moved south and fished with the flotilla until 1:00. We did a gear change up a number of times, dodger/mini squid, dodger/spinner blade-mini squid and dodger custom wedding band spinner all while staying true to the cut-plug herring on the downrigger. Same results as earlier but did loose 3 herring to bites that didn’t even release the clip.

Around 1:00 headed into Coulon for a potty stop and lunch at Kid Valley (a fish sandwich and peanut butter shake!). After lunch motored back out onto the lake and headed for the mouth of the Cedar River where we flat lined a herring and ran one off the downrigger at 26’ in 80-90’ of water. No bait or fish on the meter and nobody home. Fished another hour or so until about 3:30 and called it a day. No fish for our efforts but hey, we were sight seeing not fishing and it was an incredible day for sightseeing!

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